Forecasting can be difficult in terms of accuracy, particularly in the disrupted post COVID environment that we're currently living through. Whilst this might be seen as a reason to give up on forecasting completely, it's actually the opposite - being able to get an estimate of how much your customers are going to spend can be pivotal to your performance and can be the difference between success and failure!

Forecasting like any form of guesswork is prone to errors, however the more frequently it is updated then the more relevant it becomes. Not only does providing an expected sales result help your business to plan for the future, but it helps you personally to see how much of your goal you are likely to achieve by the end of the quarter or year. If you receive a bonus or commission for hitting your target, then this can be a real carrot to show you what kind of $$ you can be expecting. In return your managers and the business get guidance on how the business is going to perform.

Forecasting is completed at a customer level, and can be completed at an annual, quarterly or monthly basis - work with your Sales team to identify what is the best fit for your business.

Forecasting on mobile is really simple - and should be used adhoc throughout the year as you interact with your customers and want to update your expectation of what they're going to spend.

The simplest way is to navigate to the scorecard page on your Numerik app and at the top of the screen click on FORECASTS so that it highlights in blue and your scorecards are in blue.

Click into the FY 2023 scorecard which should take you to the customer leaderboard (if not, change your leaderboard to customer). From here you can use the + and - buttons to update the forecast for each customer or click the number and type in your own number!

As you update your forecasts for each customer, you should see the % of your target that you will achieve if your forecasts are accurate. Is your forecast higher or lower % than your target? What can you do to get your forecast higher (and your customers purchasing more)?

When you're planning ahead (particularly at the start of a new year or quarter) we recommend you use the Numerik desktop tool to get your forecasts started for the period. On desktop make sure you are in forecast view (click Target Tracking if you cannot see Forecast View like the screenshot below) and find the target period you want to forecast against.

Click on the scorecard to be taken to the leaderboard page which will list your customers and their revenue for the period so far. In the Forecast column you can change numbers against each customer, representing what you are forecasting their sales figure to be for the period.

As you enter these numbers you'll see the progress bar across the top of the screen update, telling you how much of your target you have forecast (below example shows 90%).

There's a really simple hack which allows you to populate your forecast for each customer with last year's figures. This is a great base to set your forecast for the period and then you can focus just on the top 20% of customers with an accurate estimate of what you think they might spend this period.

If you hover over the Forecast heading you'll see a ☰ symbol appears - click on this symbol and select "Paste data from another column".

This will allow you to pre-populate your forecast using historical sales data, for example:

Make sure you click Overwrite Existing Values to update all your customer figures.

Now with your forecast set based on one of the above figures, you can just focus on getting the top end of town accurate - and this should give you a fairly accurate forecast of where you will be at by the end of the period.

The rest is up to you! If your forecast isn't above the target, you can look for gaps in your sales data and find opportunities to grow your sales amongst your existing customers.